Rachel, Peter, Bryan, and the Basic Cynicism of the “Bachelorette” Finale

Rachel Lindsay and Bryan Abasolo, whose relationship and engagement were documented on the latest season of “The Bachelorette.”

Photograph Courtesy BacheloretteABC / Twitter

On Monday night, millions of Americans, expectant and weary, settled in
for the finale of “The Bachelorette,” to find out to whom Rachel Lindsay,
the breezy Texan protagonist, would offer her final rose. This season of
the show, like this year as a whole, has been a revealing one. A grim
kind of reality television is now broadcasting daily from the White
House; we are all more conscious that our systems of pleasure darkly
mirror our systems of dominance. A good reality-TV show—and “The
Bachelorette” qualifies—recognizes its ridiculous ability to expose and
magnify the culture’s natural machinations. It follows, then, that in
2017 “The Bachelorette,” on its surface an escapist soap, might also
brandish a sneaky pessimism: above all, it is a game show, and whoever
works its weepy calculus most skillfully wins, plain and simple.

The finale was a torrid three-hour affair. In live segments before a
studio audience, Lindsay, who had spent two months traversing the
flatlands of America, the peaks of Geneva, and the vineyards of Rioja in
search of a husband, would be watching along with the viewers, giving
insight into the final week. Chris Harrison, our nonpartisan host,
strolled onstage, looking funereal. The lighting was medicinal pink. He
announced to the audience that this final episode would be like none
other in the franchise, which has trudged on for sixteen years. Out of
thirty-one men, three remained, and while they waited backstage three
cameras were aimed at their faces. Their body language said it all. Eric
Bigger, a personal trainer from Baltimore who once admitted to Lindsay
that he wondered if he was capable of love, had his hands clasped.
Since the finale had been taped, back in May, he had sprouted a fetching
beard—an indication that he, like us, had been aged by this ordeal.
Peter Kraus, the clear fan favorite, looked shrunken, his beautiful caterpillar eyebrows raised in the manner of a concerned Disney prince.
Bryan Abasolo, the eerily smooth chiropractor from Miami, smirked.

The live portion of the show cut to prerecorded tape, and the camera
crawled over the sun-bleached expanse of Spanish wine country, making
even Monasterio de Valvanera, a monastery with Benedictine origins
dating back to the tenth century, look tacky. Rachel tearily enumerated
her options: “When I’m with Bryan, I feel like I’m in a fairy tale.”
Eric made “our souls feel intertwined.” (Soon after, Rachel eliminated
Eric, with little fanfare.) Peter, whom she had fallen for first, and the
hardest, had saddled her with the biggest dilemma, one that disturbed
the grotesquely sanguine science of the show: he did not want to rush
into getting married; he was unsure that, at the final rose ceremony, he
would feel ready to propose. A couple of episodes earlier, when Peter
met members of Rachel’s family, they had been reassured by his hesitance,
which seemed like a sign of seriousness. Rachel was not. Part of what
had endeared her to fans was her practicality: Rachel wanted to get
married. Now, in the final week, Peter reiterated his reservations.
Rachel cried. “There has to be a way to fix this,” she said. “I feel
like he’s fighting it.”

“The Bachelorette” is not a show that rewards Peter’s strain of seriousness,
however valiant it might seem. It seems abundantly clear that, if he
and Rachel had met outside of this champagne-filled petri dish, they
would have continued their relationship and let it run its natural
course, whether toward marriage or not. But the “Bachelor” franchise is
predicated upon the idea that the foundation of a marriage can be built
in two months. For eight weeks, viewers—many of
them women and gay men, who have historical reasons to
distrust the institution of marriage—take residence in this delicious
lie. This is the show’s deep cynicism: the red roses and heartfelt professions are merely window dressing; the chase is to the ring—as material a
goal as any other reality-show prize. The viewers are romantics; the
contestants are strategists. (The majority of “Bachelor” and
“Bachelorette” couples, unsurprisingly, break up within a few months of
taping.)

Rachel and Peter’s stupefying, protracted breakup, which dominated the
finale, called attention to the perversity of this formula. It was the
only story line of the night that showed emotion. After their overnight
date in the fantasy suite, the camera captured bells tolling, and we
suspected that they were meant as omens. For their final date, Rachel and Peter
consulted a monk at the monastery. He told them that relationships are
difficult. Standing against dramatic mosaics of Marian motherhood, Peter
and Rachel rehashed their differences. Their fight drifted into the
night. Rachel cried so much that her fake eyelashes wilted. (At the live
debriefing, Peter told Rachel that, after she left the suite, he could not
bear to pick the fibres up from the floor.) Finally, Peter offered to
propose, and Rachel rejected him. “I want you to do it because you want to
do it.” Peter grew upset: “O.K., well, then go find someone who is
going to give you a mediocre life!” They have reached an impasse. It is
too hard to say goodbye—so Peter rends his sweater, and Rachel blots the
last of her makeup from her eyes. Their end felt sordidly real. In the
live studio segments, there was a mesmerizing stiltedness between them,
which again seemed to violate the antiseptic core of the “Bachelor”
franchise—it was confusing to feel that, amid such artifice, a real
tragedy may have occurred.

Essentially, Bryan won by default. There’s not much to say about him.
His cheekbones are prominent, his inner life nowhere to be found. (It
turns out that he was once a contestant on a UPN dating show called “The
Player.”) “The sass, the charm, the attorney in her: that actually turns
me on,” he said, when Harrison asked what attracts him to Rachel. From
the beginning, Bryan had tunnelled toward the prize, letting Rachel
know, over and over again, that he shared her desire to get married.

After Peter leaves, we see Bryan consulting a jeweller. He picks out a
pear-shaped diamond ring—a modern, ubiquitous cut. The proposal is
devoid of tremors, of stumbles, of any other indicators of true
connection. In the climactic moment, on a Spanish cliff, Bryan strides
up to Rachel, who is caught in a fierce wind. He opens the box and
Rachel shrieks. “It’s so pretty! Give it to me! It’s so pretty!” Game
over.

Later, still steeped in a mood of lost love, I saw a tweet appear in my
timeline showing a screen shot of Peter’s high-school yearbook. “Go
to art school, become famous in one way or another, be on The Bachelor,
live happily,” it read. The network will choose its next Bachelor soon.